Divinity Road (6 page)

That night I could not sleep, my mind replaying the events of the day, our conversation, every word you had spoken, analysing our exchanges for hidden meanings, signs that I had made a favourable impression on you. Lying on my bed, closing my eyes, I recaptured the earnest way your upper teeth played with your lower lip when you were listening intently, the furrows in your brow as you recounted some significant event in Ethiopia’s colonial past, the explosion of laughter in your eyes when I managed to say something that you found witty.

And if that first date had gone well, the next day was even more of a success. Thank God for militant students, I thought, as we turned into Sidist Kilo Square and caught sight of the police roadblock. This time I had come prepared with provisions and an itinerary. In the boot I had a flask of coffee, a rug and a package of pastries. When I suggested that we head out of the city to the mountains, I thought for a second you would say no. But your face lit up and you nodded enthusiastically. Let’s go to the Church of Entonto Raguel, you said. It is at the top of Mount Entoto. It’s the place where Menelik was crowned. I will tell you all about its history and you can tell me why it is a beautiful building.

So that is where we went, you guiding me through the outskirts of the city while I basked in the warmth of your presence. It was a marvellous day, perhaps the happiest of my life to date. You remember the glorious weather, sunshine but cool up in the mountains, the picnic of coffee and cakes, the growing pleasure in each other’s company? A magical time, the flower of our love budding but not yet in bloom.

They are calling us for lunch. Yesterday there was only plain rice, no stew to accompany it. One of my fellow detainees, a young Somali, complained about the poor quality of the food. The prison officer looked at him with such venom I thought he would strike him. Well, if you don’t like the menu, Kunte Kinte, he said very slowly and loudly, so that we could all understand, you can fuck off back to your own country. Where does such anger come from? Why does he not understand that most of us would much rather be back in our motherlands if we believed we could live a peaceful life there without fear or hunger, that being here is not a choice but a necessity, a matter of life or death?

***

Back to my journal, my belly churning from the swill. I have decided to reduce what I eat, given that the food is so unappetising and does not seem to agree with me. There are plenty of fellows here who are grateful for my helping. Just as the inactivity seems to rob me of my appetite, so I witness others getting fat through boredom. We each react differently to our burdens.

Well, where was I? Yes, I had taken you on my journey through the wilderness of my solitude to the moment when we connected. On a superficial level, after that it was all plain sailing for the next ten years, wasn’t it? Courting, marriage, the move back to Asmara, the births of our children. The summer of our love.

But of course it was never that easy. Our relationship was an explosive shock to your family, I was from the wrong class, the wrong religion, and our move back to my homeland was less a positive step than an escape.

Back in Eritrea among my people, it was your turn to be the alien, our union frowned on despite your conversion to Islam. But we persevered, working hard to create a healthy home environment, careful to lead blameless lives. I drove my father’s taxi night and day, built up our savings and made plans to buy a plot of land in Kahawta. But it was you who made the true sacrifices. You threw yourself into your cultural and religious re-education, learning Tigrinya for everyday conversation, Arabic for your
Qur’anic
classes, recruiting my sister to teach you our cuisine, my aunt to show you our city, the best market stalls, cheapest shops, determined to make new friends, to fit into our society. You never complained about your exile, the rejection by your family, the loss of your friends. The times I felt low, I thought of you and your spirit inspired me, my love.

So as I struggled to build our financial security, you fought for acceptance, toiled to put down roots. And little by little our efforts were rewarded. You had graduated before leaving Addis and had even done a term’s teaching at that primary school in Keraniyo, the one with the Sudanese head teacher with all those gold teeth and those odd spinster twins who had been teaching there forever and a day. Now, in Asmara, you were determined to continue with your career, to play your part in the community and in contributing to the household finances. I remember your first day at your new teaching job, that pitiful school in Sembel, the dilapidated classrooms, doors off hinges, the missing window panes, the ever-hungry children. It must have been demoralising at times, but you never gave up and always made the best of the situation. And after the birth of each of our own children, after the maternity leave, once you felt they were happy and healthy, you always went back to your job, to your other children at that school.

So there we were, ten years of growth. A cheerful home, two people in love, blossoming children, the respect and affection of family, friends and colleagues around us. We felt secure, invulnerable, our home an impenetrable fortress. And then, in the course of a single fateful evening, our citadel laid siege to, overrun, laid waste. The fragility of happiness.

You remember the evening, don’t you? A day of national celebration, Eid ul-Fitr, the end of the month of fasting. The streets of Asmara heaving with crowds dressed up in their finest, the usual stream of families enjoying the passeggiata along Harnet Avenue, the stalls and cafés and restaurants buzzing.

You at home with the children, supervising their efforts to decorate the house, preparing a delicious family feast of Eritrean specialities you had taught yourself over the years: the lamb’s tongue sember, the spicy zilzil keih, the milder derho alicha.

And me out in the taxi, despite your protestations that on this one day of the year I should take a break. Up before the muezzin had made his early morning call to prayer, a full day’s work behind me already, ferrying the jubilant to their relatives or further afield, to the bus terminus, the train station, the airport. Returning home through the crowds at five, deciding to give in to your pleading and spend a precious evening together. And then, minutes after getting through the front entrance, no sooner had I kicked off my shoes, the knock at the door, the neighbour’s daughter bringing news of the onset of her mother’s labour, the plea to take her to hospital. So shoes back on, reversing out of the driveway, the women groaning in the backseat, her sister alongside me up front urging me to put my foot down.

And then the drop off outside the maternity ward entrance, the sister’s fumbling with coins and notes, my refusal to accept payment for such a noble mission. I remember thinking, that’s it, now home to my loved ones. I recall feeling excitement for my neighbour’s family, but also relief that I was not about to embark on a night like theirs. After all, we already had our children. Our family was already complete. Already perfect.

But before I could pull away from the hospital, I found myself blocked by a young white woman frantically trying to flag me down. She was smiling, mouthing something at me, an appeal to take pity and give her a ride I supposed, her face so pink it looked as if it had been scrubbed with a wire brush. I hesitated, picturing your disapproval as your feast grew cold and the disappointment of the children. But it went against my nature to turn down a fare, so I shrugged, pulled up beside her and waited as she climbed in alongside me.

I go train of Massawa thirty minutes, she began in breathless, halting Tigrinya. Please help quick. Then added, as if to clarify, Please railway station thank you.

And there it was. In accepting the challenge to reach the station before the departure of her train, I was sealing my fate. Of course, I cannot blame her. What is she guilty of? Slack timekeeping? An over-ambitious itinerary for the day? As we set off for the train station my speed was, I have to admit, a fraction higher than usual, but I was not distracted, my mind focused on navigating through the Asmara traffic and crowds of pedestrians.

I was just negotiating my way across Bahti Meskerem Square when I hit the boy. I swear he came out of nowhere, sprinting onto the road, his head turned back, chuckling as he ran clear of his chasing friends, his mind empty save for the thrill of his game, oblivious to the dangers of the road.

Witnesses backed me up. It was a glancing blow to his side. I had seen him at the last second, braked and swerved. The impact was not enough to kill him. It was barely forceful enough to cause more than heavy bruising, but he fell awkwardly, spinning round so that his arms could not cushion his fall, so that the first contact with the tarmac was his head. It was this blow, a split second’s trauma to his skull, that did for him. By the time I had pulled up and raced to the boy, a crowd had gathered around him. Already blood was seeping from his nostrils, a trickle from his mouth. His friends stood around, silent and shaken, while we waited for the police and an ambulance. I stumbled back to the car to collect my documents and found the white women had disappeared. I think I knew the boy would die as soon as it happened, I remember the feeling of certainty as I was driven to the police station in the back of the patrol car. As I found out an hour later, he never regained consciousness.

I have never gone into so much detail about that catastrophic evening. It has always been taboo, marking as it did the end of our carefree life, the beginning of our downward spiral. The rest you know, of course. Not just the legal cost – my trial and three-year prison sentence for careless driving and manslaughter – but the less tangible consequences. Our attempts to settle the accidental death with the victim’s family through compensation payments. The realisation not only of the power and influence of the boy’s family, but of their relentless desire for vengeance. Their refusal to accept our efforts at mediation. Their unyielding, ruthless campaign against you and the children while I was incarcerated.

I will not speak of my experiences in prison. Suffice to say, I felt, still feel, tremendous guilt for my crime. That whatever pain and misery I suffered behind bars was entirely justified as settlement for what I had done. After all, there was a mother sitting alone somewhere in Asmara grieving for a son she would never see again.

No, I felt no self-pity. I took my punishment as a form of redemption. But what they did to you and the children, my love, was nothing short of mental torture. And if the purpose was to tear our lives apart just as I had torn theirs, then of course they were triumphantly successful.

It started very quietly, didn’t it? I remember you telling me during one of your monthly prison visits that a stranger had sidled up to you in the market and whispered in your ear that your house was being watched, that one of your children was to be targeted for an unpleasant accident. You were too stunned to speak, dropped your shopping bag in shock, and by the time you had bent down to pick it up, the figure had vanished into the crowd.

A few days later, you opened the front door first thing in the morning to find the dead dog disembowelled on the porch. A stone was thrown through the front window one evening the following week. More threats, incidents of intimidation, men approaching our children, silently drawing a finger across their throats, neighbours telling of loitering strangers, night visits warning them not to associate with us. Little by little we became social pariahs.

And then came the message from the boy’s family, delivered verbally to you by an uncle one evening twelve months into my sentence. Only the life of one of our children would ease the loss of their son, no other compensation would be acceptable. Perhaps it was a serious threat, perhaps just an upping of pressure to drive us out of Asmara for good. Whatever the case, it was enough to galvanise you into action. I remember your last visit so clearly, the strain etched painfully into the lines of your face, your eyes puffy from lack of sleep.

We agreed that you would take all our savings and drive the taxi back to Addis. It would be a hazardous journey for someone who had only just picked up the basics of driving, though I thanked God for our perseverance in the ritual of our Sunday morning driving lessons.

And that, my love, was the last time I ever saw you. You sold up our household goods, gave away what nobody would buy, packed the rest into the taxi wedged between children, then set off for your home city. You continued to write, of course, wonderful stirring letters that gave me the strength to bear the pain of our separation. You wrote regularly, though the unreliable postal service meant that some months I would receive nothing for weeks, then four letters in as many days.

You wrote of your attempts to re-build a life in Addis, your efforts at mending relations with your family, their rejection of you and your ‘heathen’ children. Setting up a new home, just a modest room in a poor district of the city, paying school fees, new school uniforms, repairs to the ailing taxi, all ate away at our savings. Frightened by the threats to the children, you were unwilling to return to teaching and to leave them alone for any length of time, so you bought a sewing machine and set up a tailoring business from home. As always, you showed courage, spirit, enterprise. My love and pride were never stronger.

There were many obstacles to overcome, but your steely determination and good spirits prevailed, and over the next eighteen months you forged a new life for yourselves. And then, when least expected, the axe fell again. Another evening visit, another stranger at the door. The message, that the boy’s family had branches of the extended family living in Addis, that they had got wind of your move there, that the situation had not changed, the old threats still applied.